Il caso Katharina Blum

It's funny, but the recent Criterion DVD release of "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" gives it a whole new perspective. Next to "The Legend of Rita", "Lost Honor" is almost like "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead". But in this case, it's dead serious.

Katharina Blum is a normal German woman who has a one-night state with a man she meets at a party. Later, she finds out that he is an anarchist and part of a Baader-Meinhoff-type gang; the group Rita from "Legend of Rita" is supposed to be a member of.

Responding to the activities of German urban guerrillas, there is a national dragnet to hunt them down. Blum is arrested and gets caught up in the hunt, revealing a myopic government at it's most abusive. Equally revealing is the insidious nature of the media and it's role in repression. You can't help but get a chill watching it not because you can't believe it ever happened. But because you can't believe it happens all the time. Life in America is a lot like Katharina Blum's for many people.

Schlöndorff is an intellectual. Both of these films are great reflections of that. They're smart, challenging while being well paced and lithe. "Lost Honor" marked the directorial debut of Margarethe Von Trotta (in some ways a protégé of Schlöndorff's not to mention lover) who would go on to great things including "Rosa Luxembourg".

Apart from its general and still (i.e. now more than ever) valid attacks on the scrupelous tactics of tabloid journalism, this movie is also very valuable as a time piece about German society in the 1970's, when the country was shaken by fear of terrorist assassinations and everything considered anti-Democratic (meaning left-wing). In this way, the film not only takes into question the missing morality of tabloid journalists, but also the loss of human rights in a society bothered with questions of homeland security (parallels to the current situation in the U.S. are obvious). Katharina Blum is not only destroyed by the merciless press abusing her for sensationalist journalism, but also by a police and judicial system that doesn't value an individual's right of privacy anymore, and even less the principle of innocent until proven otherwise.

A film of exceptional quality (even though the acting isn't convincing at some times), "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum" is strongly recommended to every thinking movie fan with an interest in the abuse of power in our not-so-democratic society.

Excellent film, well-worth searching out. According to the director's feature on the DVD,Boll wrote the novel after being smeared by a journalist who claimed Boll was a spiritual father to the terrorists, when in fact Boll was only trying to establish a dialogue with them.

Excellennt acting throughout, with Jurgen Prochnow (Das Boot, English Patient) as the terrorist Ludgwig. And a true sign of a great film, it doesn't feel dated at all (other than the clothing- dig those crazy bell-bottoms!).

I think some commentators are over-stating the obvious as far as civil liberties and left-wing/right-wing agendas. Governments always over-react that way. Our own Prime Minister Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act in the 1970s when the FLQ in Quebec kidnapped and killed a British diplomat.

And Katherina herself is not totally without guilt, as she does aid and abet Ludwig. Also there is a scene with her in detention where she pulls a hankerchef out of her purse and what look like raw diamonds fall out onto her lap.

I think the worst slime in the film is the print journalist, and the way the police collaborate with him, allowing him to get the "inside" first.

The impressive funeral, complete with boy's choir, sponsored by the journal owner-manager, and his "spin" on freedom of the press show the propaganda war at work. Those in attendance include her "mystery lover", whose main concern is obviously protecting his reputation, understandably perhaps after seeing up close how the press destroyed Katherina's life.

A great score by the German modernist composer Hans Werner Henze adds to the surreal Carnival atmosphere and environment.

Angela Winkler isn't much of anything, but when she has a brief affair with a man who turns out to be a terrorist, the police investigate her, and the press crucifies her.

Distrust of news organizations is not a phenomenon that arose in the 21st century; 'gutter press' is recorded as of 1845, and 'yellow journalism' in 1881. This collaboration between Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta from the novel by Heinrich Boll is an outright polemic, almost as savage as the attack on Miss Winkler's character. It's hard to qualify it, since the entire situation creeps up on the audience, just as it does on Miss Winkler. One day she's going to discotechs and dancing to 'Spanish Flea', the next the police are talking to her calmly, and a few days later, her name is all over the papers.

In a society where 'news' has become some sort of addictive drug that stresses out anyone who looks at it, and maddens anyone who doesn't -- and no, I haven't looked at the election results, and don't tell me -- here's a movie as bitterly prophetic as NETWORK.

This is one of a handful of German productions of the 1970s critically acclaimed by world cinema. "Die verlorene Ehre der Katerina Blum" tells of the seemingly innocent love affair of a young woman with a man who turns out to be a fugitive bank robber. Twisting and turning the story to make it more "readable" a tabloid reporter shamelessly destroys the woman's reputation, even leading to her arrest as an "accomplice" to the crimes committed by her "boyfriend".

The film shows in detail how the situation impacts many people, including Katerina's employers, neighbors, family memebers. All speak highly of her, yet the newspapers always manage to print distorted facts, embellishments and outright lies. The ending, though unexpected and shocking, will satisfy the viewer, who by now completely empathises with the title character who had been "railroaded" by the press for no other purpose than to sell more papers. A five star classic.